Moon Cakes

I’m hardly an expert on moon cakes.  I’m not Chinese, nor even Asian.  I hadn’t even tasted a moon cake in years.  But recently I spotted an article about the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival in a local newspaper, Asia, and it got me thinking about the last time I had eaten moon cakes. 

Many years ago, right after I was graduated from college, I spent a year teaching English in China.  While many of my ex-classmates were working on Wall Street or preparing to become lawyers and doctors, I lived in a concrete block apartment in southern China with no hot running water and a squat toilet.  My kitchen was overrun with tiny ants and infested with cockroaches the length of my middle finger.  Mosquitoes bred in the toilet, making any trip to the bathroom a quick one.  It was the best year of my life.

It was the late 80s and the beginning of the Democracy Movement that would eventually culminate a brutal crackdown by the government and the massacre of protesters in Tian An Men Square in Beijing in 1989. Looking back, I consider myself lucky to have been a part of history, watching the growth of freedom of speech in communist China. At the university where I taught, hand-written posters were put up all over campus, attracting throngs of students who gathered around to read and discuss the ideas they contained. 

As an American English teacher, I had the privilege of sharing Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson with these bright, young students. They were eager to learn, and saw English as the key to getting a good-paying job in the burgeoning international trade market. 

New to teaching and with only a year of college Chinese under my tongue, I was terrified and overwhelmed.   But the warm and enthusiastic reception I got from my students quickly put me at ease.

During my first month as a teacher, boxes began appearing on my doorstep. Students stopped by my apartment with colorful metal tins. It was my first introduction to the Mid-Autumn (or Moon) Festival. Inside the boxes were moon cakes, small cakes with a golden brown pastry crust decorated with an image or Chinese character.  They were stuffed with a sweet, dense filling of lotus or red bean paste and a bright yellow egg yolk that represented the moon.  By the end of the week I had eaten my weight in moon cakes and I still had a pile of them, nearly enough to last me until the next year’s festival.

That week one of my students also invited me to her home.  After class, she accompanied me on the bus into Guangzhou and we navigated narrow, twisting alleys until we reached her small apartment.  I spent the afternoon with her and her father making dough, preparing sweet sesame and red bean paste filling, and learning how to shape and fill the moon cakes.  Afterwards, her mother cooked dinner for us and they sent me home with an armful of (more!) moon cakes and a wooden moon cake mold of my own.  It was a simple gift and a beautiful memento of that afternoon--a perfect introduction into a new culture through the making and sharing of food. 

About

The Mid-Autumn Festival (or Moon Festival), which traditionally marked the end of the harvest season, is a widely celebrated holiday in China.  This year the event takes place on Sunday, September 18 (beginning on the evening of Saturday, September 17).   

Families and friends gather to spend the evening gazing at the full moon and sharing a midnight feast.  The festival is also known for the making and eating of "moon cakes," round pastries filled with sweet fillings.

The story of the moon cakes dates back to the Yuan dynasty (AD 1280-1368) when China was ruled by Mongolia.  Rebel leaders, planning an uprising against the ruling empire, cleverly used the upcoming Moon festival as an occasion to bake special cakes.  Hidden inside each cake was a message with details of the attack.  The rebels were successful and went on to establish the Ming Dynasty (AD 1368-1644).

To celebrate the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, the San Diego Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association will host its first Moon Fest Faire.  The event will take place Saturday, September 17, from 10:30 am-11 pm, and Sunday, September 18 from 11 am-9 pm in the Kearny Mesa Bowl parking lot at the corner of Clairemont Mesa Blvd. and Convoy Street.  The street fair features live entertainment, including dancers, musicians, martial arts demonstrations, movies, and...a moon cake eating contest!  A food court promises “unique Chinese culinary treats you have never tasted before.” 

How can I resist that?

Comments

[Kirk]

Hi Angie - Don't know how you snuck this under my nose!!! Nice site, can't wait to see your Moon Cake taste comparisons.

[Kirk]

Angie - Where were you teaching in China? My wife was a student at Beijing Normal University at the time of the Tianamen Square protests.

[Angie]

Kirk--

Thanks, it's only been up a few days. I'm still trying to figure out how everything works. But I have to thank you (and Beth) for giving me the courage to finally jump into the food blogging world. Your site has been a real inspiration.

Wow, your wife was in Beijing during that time? I was down in Guangzhou--teaching at South China Normal University from 1986-87.

[Angie]

Kirk--

And thanks for the link to my blog on your site!

[yi]

I feel so ashamed that I knew less history about this traditional Chinese holiday than you did. The only thing I know about the moon festival is this is the time for farmers to celebrate the end of the harvest season. I do remeber when I was a young kid, we will eat moon cake stuffed with bean paste and colored preserved fruit. Materials were rather limited where I grew up. NOt nearly as fruitful as the southern part of China. I do remember and often dream about was those crabs that we always eat during this time of year. It is traditionally believed that the crabs are at their fattest during fall, female one full of those rich orange eggs right under the upper shell. They were sold at the side of street, live, running around sideways, trucks load of them. My grandma simple steam them and serve with vineger and ginger. It was sweet and juicy. And that is why I have such a hard time eating lobester legs and crabs here, they taste like dead rubber with salt rubbed all over it. Good crab should be sweet, rich and light at the same time. Thanks for the wonderful memory. The moon does look extra big and bright tonight. Shall my grandma and grandpa rest in peace.

Yi

[Angie]

Yi--

Don't feel ashamed. I didn't know all that either until I googled it! And there's plenty of American history I don't know either.

Thank you for sharing those sweet memories of your grandparents. Your description of the crabs you grew up with is so rich it makes my mouth water.

[Scott]

Hi "Miss Angie" !!

It's your pal Scott from Happy Days at South China Normal University! Thanks for pointing me to your blog. Wow - so many memories. Especially the concrete apartment and all the wonderful creatures we had living there with us. Remember the noisy chickens and how we threw rice over the balcony at them to shut them up?? Remember how we almost burned the apartment down at Halloween when the students visited our "Haunted House"? And those mooncakes - you forgot to mention how our colleague Stephen used them as a reference in his composition classes and grammar classes for the rest of the school year - driving the students crazy! ("Oh, Gao San!")

Anyway, living in China again, I have been eating my share of mooncakes lately. Now, it's the customers who send them. This time, I received a box of Starbuck's mooncakes - can you believe it - Starbuck's mooncakes?! Mocha-flavored, chocolate-flavored, green tea, and even curry - yuck! (What does curry have to do with Starbucks anyway??) There are some other "modern" mooncakes that I tasted a few years ago - they used a very light fruit filling instead of all that bean paste.

Well that's the latest mooncake news flash from Beijing.

Thanks for the memories. I was a little struck by your opening, "Many years ago..." - ulp! It really has been many years. Guangzhou was the best place to be in China back then.

-Scott

[Angie]

Scott--

It's great to hear from you. Of course I remember "feeding" the chickens and the mosquito netting catching on fire. So many great stories from that year in Guangzhou.

Now that you are back in China, please write! You can be my crazysalad Beijing correspondent.

Starbucks moon cakes?! Is nothing sacred any more?

[Scott]

Another funny story was when Jim visited and he flew on that Air Force plane to Guilin. He and the other customers had a great time trying on the souvenir ties that they gave out on the plane. I think he put on an army uniform that somebody gave him or something. OK, what does this have to do with mooncakes? (Don't worry, I won't turn your blog into a running China memoire...)

[Sonia]

Angie, your blog is fantastic! very interesting! I love it!